A mourner sits near the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, known as the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City on 8 Jan 2025 (Photo: Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters)
Since 1 Jan 2025, the IDF has killed at least 332 Palestinians in Gaza, including women and children, while continuing to impede the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
None of these Palestinians in the Gaza Strip voted in the US election on 5 Nov 2024.
Israeli forces have killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, as authorities warned that the Al Aqsa, Nasser and European hospitals in the enclave face imminent closure over dire fuel shortages.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) reiterated its call for global action, saying the continued violation of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory must not be allowed to continue for another year.
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, 8 Jan 2025 (Photo: Mohammed Salem / Reuters)
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warns that the lives of 15 newborns on incubators are at risk because of fuel shortages. None of the infants in the incubators are holding any Israeli hostages.
A Palestinian nurse attends to a newborn in an incubator at a hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, 10 Sep 2024 (Photo: Ramadan Abed / Reuters)
Mourners react as they carry the body of a Palestinian child killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, 8 Jan 2025 (Photo: Mohammed Salem / Reuters)
The West Bank is not immune to the IDF or their proxies. Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in their daily raids in the West Bank, including two boys, while Israeli settlers burned Palestinian several homes and vehicles.
The IDF have killed at least 45,936 Palestinian civilians and combatants while wounding or maiming 109,274 since 7 Oct 2023. The Israeli High Command asserts that 17,000 of the dead were militants. There are no judicial transcripts of the hearings for these accused militants. At least 1,139 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken captive on 7 Oct 2023 for a future prisoner swap.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich leads a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, 11 Nov 2024. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
Likud Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says half of Gazans can be ‘encouraged’ to leave within two years. By the Likud Party’s own admission, straight from the jackass’ mouth, we witness their strategy of Nakba 2023-2024, all paid for by the hardworking American taxpayer.
Israel will celebrate its 100th Centennial in 23 years. Does anybody on the planet think we’ll see a Two-State Solution in 2048?
Photographed below are Holocaust survivors and their descendants who in April 2024 recognized that the Nakba in Gaza was a genocide. Yet in 2025 there are people who claim that the wanton killing of Palestinians is Israel’s right to self-defense, denying IDF atrocities that are making the Gaza Strip completely inhospitable.
Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos (C) and descendants of Holocaust survivors take part in an 13 Apr 2024 London protest against the Nakba in Gaza. (Photo: @Aliwala786110/X)
The fires in southern California forced President Joe Biden to cancel his Jan 2025 trip to Rome where he was to meet the Italian Prime Minister, President, and Pope Francis, in what would have been his final official overseas trip as POTUS. President Biden’s Oct 2021 meeting with the first-ever Jesuit Pope was quite warm and they shared some laughs. Whether the Pope received Confession from Joe Biden is not known.
US President Joe Biden, left, meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, 29 Oct 2021. (Photo: Vatican Media / AP)
But this time Pope Francis might have had an earful for President Biden about the “serious and shameful” situation in the Gaza Strip, something the US allowed to happen by contiuning to arm and assist Israel. The Pontiff recently stated “We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians. We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country’s energy network has been hit.”
This sounds like Pope Francis described terrorism.
The United Nations General Assembly defines terrorism in GA Resolution 49/60:
Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.
According to the US (6 USCS § 101), the term terrorism is “any activity that–
(A) involves an act that–
(i) is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; and
(ii) is a violation of the criminal laws of the US or of any State or other subdivision of the US; and
(B) appears to be intended–
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
So, who are the terrorists: Israelis or Palestinians?
Sources:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/countries/israel
https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu
Costly Russian Casualties in Ukraine Setting off Demographic Timebomb for Kremlin
December 2024 was likely the most costly month for Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of neighboring Ukraine almost three years ago.
At least 48,000 troops were killed or wounded last month, the sixth straight month that Russian forces suffered an increase in monthly losses on the battlefield, British defense intelligence officials reported. Russia sustained at least 2,200 casualties on 19 Dec, the highest record of combat losses on a single day.
Russian casualties offloaded from truck or train car. (Undated photo: AP)
Moscow sustained 429,660 casualties in its war in 2024, a dramatic increase from the 252,940 battlefield losses in 2023. Since the start of the war, more than 790,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, British officials said.
For comparison, the UK suffered 750,000 military casualties during the six years it fought the Second World War in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repotted 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers KIA and 370,000 WIA since the start of Russia’s invasion.
Crosses marked only with numbers stand on the graves of unknown pro-Russian separatists at a cemetery in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. (Photo: AFP)
Russian losses in Ukraine are helping fuel a demographic timebomb that could see the country’s population reduced by half by the end of the century.
“The impact on Russian society is devastating,” said Harley Balzer, emeritus professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.
“From Russia’s perspective, (winning the war in Ukraine) is the smaller problem. The bigger issue is, is it going to be a viable country afterward regardless?”
“Life expectancy for young men is on par with a fourth-world country. Life expectancy at age 15 for a Russian man right before the (COVID-19) pandemic was about the same as his counterpart in Haiti.”
A large study into why Russian males had such short life expectancies published in 2014 concluded one of the main factors in early deaths was excessive alcohol consumption.
Other factors cited in a more recent investigation last year by the independent Russian media outlet Cherta, included high rates of murder, suicide, car crashes, and other fatal accidents.
The appalling number of Russian casualties was the major reason the Kremlin press-ganged ethnic minorities and recruited North Korean soldiers for human wave attacks. Vladimir Putin’s anxiety of the billion plus Chinese population on his eastern border was part of his reasoning in re-establishing an All-Slavic Union with the Kremlin at the head, a neo-USSR with the power and glory it once held. But his brutal invasion backfired and he has cost Russia (and Ukraine) generations of Slavic people never to be born.
Sources:
Mexico’s New President Taking Charge
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum pointing at a map from 1607 showing an early portrayal of North America. (Photo: AFP)
Newly elected Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has suggested North America including the United States could be renamed “Mexican America” – a historic name used on an early map of the region in response to US President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
“Mexican America, that sounds nice,” Sheinbaum joked, pointing at the map from 1607 showing an early portrayal of North America.
The president, who has jousted with Trump in recent weeks, used her daily press conference to give a history lesson, flanked by old maps and former culture minister Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real. In another response to the blathering President-elect, President Sheinbaum is taking pro-active steps to stem the number of migrants appearing at the US-Mexican border.
So-called migrant caravan advances to the US through Huehuetan, southern Mexico (Getty Images).
Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the US border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place.
The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the center of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and last year succeeded in significantly reducing the number of migrants reaching the US border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.
Per CIA in 2022: Mexico’s export partners were the US at 77%, Canada 4%, China 2%, Taiwan 1%, South Korea 1%; import partners were the at US 56%, China 17%, Germany 3%, South Korea 3%, Japan 2%.
Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give them some defense after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.
Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.
Claudia Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman to be elected President and capable of standing up to Trump who has problems with charismatic women.
Just as Canada recently appropriated $1.3 bn in funds for their border ahead of Trumpf’s ascendancy, the new Mexican president is trying to soften any blows from the incoming administration by lowering the number of migrants at the US-Mexican border. Whether this plan works or not remains to be seen, especially if these migrants were trying to re-unite with family members already in the US. There is no information suggesting that Pres. Sheinbaum intends to visit Mar-a-Lago or Wash DC any time soon.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89v4w51dzyo
North Korea: Giant Tourist Beach Resort to Open June 2025
A photo of a general aerial view of the “Kalma Coast Tourism Area” in the North Korean city of Wonsan, released on 31 Dec 2024. (KCNA via AFP)
North Korea’s long-stalled Kalma beach resort will finally open in June 2025. North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un said the project is the “first big step” in advancing the country’s tourism. Media reports suggest that the tourist resort is aimed at Russian visitors.
Per CIA: population 26,298,666; GDP per capita: $1,700.
Launched in 2014, the project was scheduled to open by April 2019. However, it encountered numerous setbacks, including design modifications, material shortages caused by international sanctions, and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) and his daughter Ju Ae walking on the beach during a visit to the “Kalma Coast Tourism Area” in the North Korean city of Wonsan. (Photo: KCNA via AFP)
In July 2024, South Korea’s spy agency the NIS said that Kim was preparing Ju Ae to succeed him, though the selection was not final.
This is unimaginable that a country with endemic food insecurity would conceive of opening a tourist location. Giving the Russian oligarchs a safe haven to enjoy the beaches makes sense as their summer resort areas in Crimea are in flux because of the war. Manning this resort will be a security challenge for Pyongyang as food supplies will most likely be pilfered or siphoned off by hungry workers.
The children of North Korea are starving while Kim Jong-un test-fired a hypersonic missile just as USSECSTATE Antony Blinken arrived in Seoul, South Korea.
If the North Korean supremo isn’t seen in public pointing at something, he is seen enjoying his cigarettes. But smoking is not going to kill Kim Jong-un; he may end up hanging by his ankles like Benito Mussolini one day for starving his people and sending thousands to die in Russia while he takes each of his soldier’s $2,200 monthly stipend.
Source:
North Korea says giant tourist beach resort to open in June 2025 – Radio Free Asia
Health News: Noise Pollution More Than Nuisance, But Proven Health Risk
From Harvard Medical School:
“For half a century, US agencies such as the EPA have deemed noise pollution “a growing danger to the health and welfare of the Nation’s population.” The European Environmental Agency reports that noise ranks second only to air pollution as the environmental exposure most harmful to public health.
Recently, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that people exposed to high aircraft noise levels could be at greater risk of poor heart function, increasing their risk of heart attack, stroke, and irregular heartbeat.
Residents living near noisy airports had 10% to 20% worse heart structure and function, compared to people who moved to get away from the aircraft noise.
Cardiologists reported people’s heart muscles had grown stiffer and thicker over time, making the organ less efficient at pumping blood, quadrupling a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke.
Environmental factors such as air pollution or noise have already been linked to adverse health effects such as cardiovascular diseases and general well-being.
In 2023, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) found that the risk to commit suicide increases for people exposed to high levels of transportation noise. Noise is a constant stressor affecting sleep, levels of stress hormones, changes in brain function, or a sense of loss of control.
The study found that exposure to transportation noise at home was linked to a higher risk of death by suicide. With every 10 dB increase of average road traffic noise at home, risk for suicides rises by 4%. An association with railway noise was also observed, although less pronounced.
Mental health disorders affect nearly one billion people worldwide and are a leading cause of suicide. Noise abatement programs, adding greenery to the urban sprawl, flying less noisier aircraft like the new Airbus A220, relocating away from airports, and reducing automobile traffic can lower people’s exposure to excess noise, lowering their health risks.
Sources:
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2024.09.1217
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/noise-and-health
https://www.swisstph.ch/en/news/news-detail/news/transportation-noise-increases-risk-for-suicides
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Nuclear Engineer, Humanitarian: President Jimmy Carter
(1 Oct 1924 – 29 Dec 2024)
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, US President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, celebrate after signing the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978. (Photo: Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
US President Jimmy Carter and Panama’s General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Torrijos-Carter Treaties on 7 Sep 1977.
President Jimmy Carter, in his first full day in office, fulfilled a campaign promise by granting unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by fleeing the country or by failing to register with their Selective Service boards. He also ordered a review of military desertion cases.
After retiring, President Carter established the Carter Center for Peace and volunteered to build homes with Habitats for Humanity.
Jimmy Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, and his mother, Lillian, pin ensign bars on his epaulets after his graduation from the US Naval Academy in 1946. He would learn to fly sea-planes and nuclear engineering for submarines. (Photo US Navy)
The US Navy’s work in developing the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, meant that Admiral Hyman Rickover and Lieutenant James Carter had access to the latest and greatest in top-secret nuclear energy technology. So when Canada’s Chalk River nuclear research facility experienced a power surge that damaged its reactor, the US sent Carter and his team. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it and he averted a nuclear disaster.
The Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, were opened in 1944. In Sep 1945, the facility put the first nuclear reactor outside of the US into operation.
President Jimmy Carter who brought peace to Israel and Egypt, returned the Panama Canal to its rightful owners, and gave amnesty to Vietnam War draft evaders, was most proud of the fact that not one bullet was fired under his administration. No other American President can say that.
At President Carter’s funeral, former President George W. Bush walked past a sitting Donald Trump who did not stand to greet him. Obama stood up and was greeted with a friendly poke in the stomach by “W.” Seeing that he might be miffed, the ever diplomatic Obama chatted a witticism to Trump that only a lip-reader would understand. With Donald Trump being sentenced the next day in New York for 34 felony counts of business fraud, someone did figure out what Obama joked about with Trump:
The Carter Center released this photograph of the funeral:
Notably absent from the photo because of the camera angle, are Russian President Vladimir Putin’s protege, Donald Trump and his tackily dressed wife Melania. They will all be re-uniting in ten days for Trump’s inauguration, keeping the USSS super busy.
Most Online Pharmacies Illegally Operated and Possibly Selling Dangerous or Ineffective Drugs
Most of the 35,000 online pharmacies around the world are operating illegally and could be selling dangerous or ineffective drugs, according to the US Trade Representative’s annual “notorious markets” report.
Ninety-six percent of online pharmacies were found to be in violation of the law, meaning they were operating without a license and selling medications without prescriptions. An estimated 20 new illegal pharmacy websites are created every day around the world.
“The health and safety concerns posed by counterfeit medicines are particularly troubling,” Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement.
Over 30 online retailers were identified in the report identified as engaged in selling counterfeit products. The websites often mimic legitimate e-commerce platforms, with false claims that they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The report compiled also singled out 19 countries over concerns about counterfeit or pirated products.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. Countries spend an estimated $30.5 billion per year on substandard and falsified medical products. You can find the suspected counterfeit drugs in the links below.
Sources:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/substandard-and-falsified-medical-products
Dog With A Broken Jaw Found In The Road Finds Happiness
Coriolanus 